Syntax highlighting

bat supports syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup
languages:

Git integration

bat communicates with git to show modifications with respect to the index
(see left side bar):

Show non-printable characters

You can use the -A/--show-all option to show and highlight non-printable
characters:

Automatic paging

bat can pipe its own output to less if the output is too large for one screen.

File concatenation

Oh.. you can also use it to concatenate files :wink:. Whenever
bat detects a non-interactive terminal (i.e. when you pipe into another process
or into a file), bat will act as a drop-in replacement for cat and
fall back to printing the plain file contents.

Integration with other tools

find or fd

You can use the -exec option of find to preview all search results with bat:

find … -exec bat {} +

If you happen to use fd, you can use the -X/--exec-batch option to do the same:

fd … -X bat

tail -f

bat can be combined with tail -f to continuously monitor a given file with syntax highlighting.

tail -f /var/log/pacman.log | bat --paging=never -l log

Note that we have to switch off paging in order for this to work. We have also specified the syntax
explicitly (-l log), as it can not be auto-detected in this case.

git show

You can combine bat with git show to view an older version of a given file with proper syntax
highlighting:

git show v0.6.0:src/main.rs | bat -l rs

xclip

The line numbers and Git modification markers in the output of bat can make it hard to copy
the contents of a file. To prevent this, you can call bat with the -p/--plain option or
simply pipe the output into xclip:

bat main.cpp | xclip

bat will detect that the output is being redirected and print the plain file contents.

Installation

On Ubuntu

... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.

Download the latest .deb package from the release page
and install it via:

sudo dpkg -i bat_0.11.0_amd64.deb # adapt version number and architecture

On Arch Linux

On Fedora

You can install bat from the Fedora Modular repository. On Fedora 29 and higher, it is enabled by default. Otherwise, run dnf install fedora-repos-modular to set up, and make sure that the fedora-modular and fedora-updates-modular repos are enabled in /etc/yum.repos.d.

From binaries

Check out the Release page for
prebuilt versions of bat for many different architectures. Statically-linked
binaries are also available: look for archives with musl in the file name.

From source

If you want to build bat from source, you need Rust 1.31 or
higher. You can then use cargo to build everything:

cargo install bat

You may have to install cmake and the libz development package
(libz-dev or libz-devel) in order for the build to succeed.

Customization

Highlighting theme

Use bat --list-themes to get a list of all available themes for syntax
highlighting. To select the TwoDark theme, call bat with the
--theme=TwoDark option or set the BAT_THEME environment variable to
TwoDark. Use export BAT_THEME="TwoDark" in your shell's startup file to
make the change permanent. Alternatively, use bats
configuration file.

If you want to preview the different themes on a custom file, you can use
the following command (you need fzf for this):

bat looks good on a dark background by default. However, if your terminal uses a
light background, some themes like GitHub or OneHalfLight will work better for you.
You can also use a custom theme by following the
'Adding new themes' section below.

Output style

You can use the --style option to control the appearance of bats output.
You can use --style=numbers,changes, for example, to show only Git changes
and line numbers but no grid and no file header. Set the BAT_STYLE environment
variable to make these changes permanent or use bats
configuration file.

Finally, use bat --list-themes to check if the new themes are available.

Using a different pager

bat uses the pager that is specified in the PAGER environment variable. If this variable is not
set, less is used by default. If you want to use a different pager, you can either modify the
PAGER variable or set the BAT_PAGER environment variable to override what is specified in
PAGER.

If you want to pass command-line arguments to the pager, you can also set them via the
PAGER/BAT_PAGER variables:

export BAT_PAGER="less -RF"

Instead of using environment variables, you can also use bats configuration file to configure the pager (--pager option).

Note: By default, if the pager is set to less (and no command-line options are specified),
bat will pass the following command line
options to the pager: -R/--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS, -F/--quit-if-one-screen and -X/--no-init.
The first (-R) is needed to interpret ANSI colors correctly. The second option (-F) instructs
less to exit immediately if the output size is smaller than the vertical size of the terminal.
This is convenient for small files because you do not have to press q to quit the pager. The
third option (-X) is needed to fix a bug with the --quit-if-one-screen feature in old versions
of less. Unfortunately, it also breaks mouse-wheel support in less. If you want to enable
mouse-wheel scrolling, you can either pass just -R (as in the example above, this will disable
the quit-if-one-screen feature), or you can use a recent version of less and pass -RF which
will hopefully enable both quit-if-one-screen and mouse-wheel scrolling.

If scrolling still doesn't work for you, you can try to pass the -S option in addition.

Configuration file

bat can also be customized with a configuration file. The location of the file is dependent
on your operating system. To get the default path for your system, call

bat --config-file

Alternatively, you can use the BAT_CONFIG_PATH environment variable to point bat to a
non-default location of the configuration file:

export BAT_CONFIG_PATH="/path/to/bat.conf"

Format

The configuration file is a simple list of command line arguments. Use bat --help to see a full list of possible options and values. In addition, you can add comments by prepending a line with the # character.

Example configuration file:

# Set the theme to "TwoDark"
--theme="TwoDark"
# Show line numbers, Git modifications and file header (but no grid)
--style="numbers,changes,header"
# Use italic text on the terminal (not supported on all terminals)
--italic-text=always
# Add mouse scrolling support in less (does not work with older
# versions of "less")
--pager="less -FR"
# Use C++ syntax (instead of C) for .h header files
--map-syntax h:cpp
# Use "gitignore" highlighting for ".ignore" files
--map-syntax .ignore:.gitignore

Using bat on Windows

bat mostly works out-of-the-box on Windows, but a few features may need extra configuration.

Colors

Windows 10 natively supports colors in both conhost.exe (Command Prompt) and PowerShell since
v1511, as
well as in newer versions of bash. On earlier versions of Windows, you can use
Cmder, which includes ConEmu.

Note: The Git and MSYS versions of less do not correctly interpret colors on Windows. If you
don’t have any other pagers installed, you can disable paging entirely by passing --paging=never
or by setting BAT_PAGER to an empty string.

Cygwin

bat on Windows does not natively support Cygwin's unix-style paths (/cygdrive/*). When passed an absolute cygwin path as an argument, bat will encounter the following error: The system cannot find the path specified. (os error 3)

This can be solved by creating a wrapper or adding the following function to your .bash_profile file:

Troubleshooting

Terminals & colors

bat handles terminals with and without truecolor support. However, the colors in the syntax
highlighting themes are not optimized for 8-bit colors and it is therefore strongly recommended
that you use a terminal with 24-bit truecolor support (terminator, konsole, iTerm2, ...).
See this article for more details and a full list of
terminals with truecolor support.

Make sure that your truecolor terminal sets the COLORTERM variable to either truecolor or
24bit. Otherwise, bat will not be able to determine whether or not 24-bit escape sequences
are supported (and fall back to 8-bit colors).

Line numbers and grid are hardly visible

Please try a different theme (see bat --list-themes for a list). The OneHalfDark and
OneHalfLight themes provide grid and line colors that are brighter.